Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) brushed past the press pack, shaking her head and waving her hand over her shoulder. When an errant food cart blocked her entrance to the meeting room, she tried to hide from reporters behind the 4-foot-11 Barbara Mikulski (Md.).

"Ask her after lunch," offered Clinton's spokesman, Philippe Reines. But Clinton, with most of her colleagues, fled the lunch out a back door as if escaping a fire.

In a sense, they were. The cause of so much evasion was S. Res. 398, the resolution proposed Monday by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) calling for the censure of President Bush for his warrantless wiretapping program.

Senate Democrats are so petrified about appearing to be soft on homeland security that they're literally running away from Feingold's censure motion. Yet they seem unable or unwilling to do anything else to both defend the Constitution and gain the upper-hand on the security issue.

For example, will Senate Democrats (other than Feingold) ask why the FBI under this administration has wasted investigatory time and energy on the peaceful activities of anti-war protesters instead of monitoring potential terrorist cells?